Remember that one day when you could wake up without an alarm? When you would get your favorite bowl of cereal and sit between the hours of 8 and 12? This is a blog dedicated to the greatest time of our childhood: Saturday mornings. The television programs you watched, the memories attached to them, and maybe introducing you to something you didn't realize existed. Updated every weekend.

The Funky
Phantom was part of Hanna-Barbera’s continuing
trend to try and emulate the success of their Scooby-Doo
franchise. Augie Anderson (Tommy Cook), Skip Gilroy (Micky Dolenz) and April
Stewart (Kristina Holland) traveled with their dog, Elmo (Jerry Dexter), in
their dune buggy, The Looney Duney, entering races around the country and
solving mysteries they happened to come across. The twist was they were
accompanied by an actual ghost.

Augie, April, Skip and Elmo meet Mudsy and Boo.

As outlined in the theme by John Sangster, the kids
had stumbled upon a mansion where Revolutionary War soldier Jonathan Wellington
“Mudsy” Muddlemore (Daws Butler, using his Snagglepuss voice) locked himself
and his cat, Boo (Don Messick), in a grandfather clock trying to duck two
Redcoats burying treasure nearby. There they remained until the kids freed
their ghosts from the clock. To make up for their cowardice, Mudsy and Boo
accompanied the kids and lent a supernatural helping hand whenever needed—once
they summoned up the courage to do so. Mudsy would also frequently regale the
kids with stories of the Revolutionary era, complete with historical
name-droppings.

These kids just love finding people in stuff, don't they?

The Funky Phantom
debuted on September 11, 1971 on ABC. Because of Hanna-Barbera’s massive
workload at the time, animation duties for the series were farmed out to Air
Programs International in Australia. Like Scooby-Doo, the kids constantly encountered supernatural entities
that ended up being criminals using elaborate ruses to accomplish their goals.
Mudsy and Boo were the only true spirits ever featured. Unfortunately, the show
failed to drum up the same success as Scooby and ended production after its
single season. It did continue to air on ABC until the fall of 1972. Reruns of
the series were included in the 1980 rerun package show The Godzilla/Dynomutt Hour with Funky Phantom.

The Funky Phantom comics, now with more ghosts!

A 13-issue Funky Phantom comic series was published by Western
Publishing and Gold Key Comics.
The comics were both original stories as well as adaptations of episodes. The
original stories went away from the series and allowed some of the villains
featured to actually be the ghosts they appeared to be; typically, from the
colonial era. One issue also had the gang travel back in time, restoring Mudsy
to his flesh and blood body while the kids were reduced to spirits. A new
character not featured on the show was introduced named Priscilla Atwater. She
was a ghost from Mudsy’s time who was romantically interested in him and
pursued him relentlessly—at least until another ghost came along and caught her
fancy. Mudsy made a return to comics in 2018 in Black Lightning/Hong Kong Phooey Special #1, which was part of DC Comics’ second
wave of reimagined Hanna-Barbera properties.